


I wish I could Feel things Like you

by elliot_cant_write



Category: If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio
Genre: F/F, If nobody else is going to write this ship then i guess i have to, this takes place ~6 years after the book ends, twelve pages of romanticizing and failing to express emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 13:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14333895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliot_cant_write/pseuds/elliot_cant_write
Summary: The letter had been a surprise, to say the least. Not that it was a letter, because Wren had always been just as obnoxious and pretentious as the rest of them, but because Wren was hardly even a real person to her anymore and it felt wrong to be receiving direct contact from a not-real person.aka Wren and Filippa have lunch in DC.





	I wish I could Feel things Like you

Filippa regularly was told that she was very level-headed, and that she could take almost anything in stride. No emotions. 

Sometimes it was a compliment. Sometimes she made it through another cut. Sometimes it was something angrily said by somebody who could not believe she cared about them. Sometimes she left and didn’t come back. You know, it varied. Like most people’s emotional responses. 

For some reason, anytime anybody brought it up she thought of a rich person’s garden party. Nobody got emotional at a rich person’s garden party. If you were smart, you also didn’t get emotional when your future was in jeopardy, or when somebody threatened to break up with you, or when your friend murdered your other friend. Filippa had also regularly been told that she was smart, and she had molded herself to fit that label. 

It was a concern, sure. Was it normal to seem that calm? Filippa never felt calm, or at least not as calm as everyone thought she was. She had just been trained from a young age not to be emotional. Being upset was childish, and she was too old for that. Being angry was disrespectful, and she was better than that. Being happy was silly, and she didn’t deserve that. 

And sometimes she would wonder what would have happened if she was different. If Filippa was not Filippa, what would the world be like?

It had been years since she had seen her. Wren had locked herself away in a country across the ocean, the only proof she was even still alive being the occasional article Alexander would find with her name in the byline. He always sent them to her, and even though it hurt, Filippa never asked him to stop. Especially not after everything with James. Besides, the fact that seeing the articles and seeing Wren’s name hurt was proof that she could still feel things. And that always was nice to know.

The letter had been a surprise, to say the least. Not that it was a letter, because Wren had always been just as obnoxious and pretentious as the rest of them, but because Wren was hardly even a real person to her anymore and it felt wrong to be receiving direct contact from a not-real person. 

Filippa had completely panicked upon receiving the letter and before she had even opened it (the handwriting on the envelope was so distinctly Wren’s that she could tell it was hers without looking at the return address) she already had her phone in her hand and had dialed Alexander’s number. Upon hearing the first ring, she nearly hung up. She was supposed to be calm, and okay, and not completely freaking out over a letter she hadn’t even read yet, but realistically the only way she could make things worse was by calling Alexander and hanging up before he answered. So Filippa just took a deep breath, then another, and then another, until eventually somebody answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Oh, Colin.” She was almost relieved. “Hi, is Alexander there?”

“He is.” Silence. “Wait, do you want to talk to him?”

“If it wouldn’t be an inconvenience, yes.” 

“Oh. He’s peeling an orange.”

“So is it an inconvenience?”

“No. Here he is.”

“Filippa.” Alexander opened like they were already halfway through a conversation. “Is everything okay? You always call on Thursdays. It’s Monday.”

“Maybe I wanted to change things up.” Filippa twirled a loose strand of hair around her finger. A nervous habit. “Also, Wren sent me a letter.”

“What the actual fuck.” Alexander’s voice was mostly dry still, but Filippa knew knew him well enough to tell that he was freaked out. “Are you okay?” 

“Of course I’m okay.” It came out more indignantly than she meant, but if Alexander noticed, he failed to say anything. “I just thought you might want to know.”

“Yeah, just...Jesus fucking fuck.” Filippa could practically imagine him pressing his palms into his eyes as he said that. “What did it say?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet.” 

“Oh. Do you maybe want to so that?” 

“Yes.” She reached over to where she had left the letter thrown on the counter. “Do you want me to tell you what it says?”

“If you’re comfortable with that. It could be something personal.”

“Why on Earth would Wren be telling me anything personal after not taking to me for literally three years?” Filippa used her nail to slit across the top of the envelope and slid out the letter. “Hell, I don’t think she would have told me anything personal for about the last three months before she left anyway.”

Alexander got real quiet, the way he did every time she or Colin or James or someone brought up the period right before Wren left for London in the middle of the night without saying anything beforehand to any of them. “It’s your choice. I’m not going to make you tell me, but if you want to, I’m open to listening.” 

“Here, I’ll read it. Just stay on.” Filippa shifted the phone to balance it between her ear and her shoulder as she unfolded the letter. She could still hear Alexander’s breathing, which was oddly comforting. And she read the letter.

•

Filippa,  
I know we have not spoken in ages, and I know that we did not end on particularly good terms. You probably never wanted to hear from me again, and I don’t blame you because I never really wanted to hear from you again either. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and I need to talk to you. I’ll soon be in America -Washington DC, to be exact- and if you are willing, I would like to do exactly that. You can reach me at this address, although I am willing to answer emails as well. I’ve never changed mine.  
Yours,  
Wren

•

“She...she wants to talk?” Filippa, ridiculously, nearly choked. “She’s going to be in DC, and she wants to talk.”

It took Alexander a second to answer. “Colin says I’ve hit my max quota on swearing for the day, but I want you to know that my true reaction to that is both colourful and creative.” 

“You have a max quota on swearing?”

“As long as Colin’s tiny cousins are here, yes.”

He was trying to make her feel better. Filippa truly did not deserve him. 

“So, are you going to?” Alexander asked, switching to a more (relatively speaking) businesslike tone. “Talk to her, I mean.”

“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.” She chewed on her lip. “I mean, I probably should say yes. I doubt she would want to talk to me if it wasn’t important.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“No!” Filippa said quickly. “Don’t take it personally, but I imagine she would be...not okay with that.” 

“That’s fair.” Alexander paused, and Filippa could hear someone muttering from his side of the phone. “Hey, Colin says we’re about to go get dinner, but if you want to keep talking, I can delay.”

“No, don’t.” Exhale. “Have fun with Colin and his tiny cousins.”

Inhale.

“Bye, Pip.”

Exhale.

“Bye, Alex.”

Alexander hung up, and Filippa closed her eyes. Weirdly, she kind of wanted to cry. 

•

Filippa emailed back. Letter writing was fun and had a killer aesthetic, but she needed practicality here. Wren’s letter was not dated and she did not mention when exactly she would be in Washington, so it seemed most practical to do something instantaneous.

Filippa sat in a chair with the intention of writing the email, truly. But one tiny sentence was stuck playing in her head over and over again in a way that made it impossible to focus. 

‘I’ve never changed mine.’

That meant all the emails she’d sent, all the emails Alexander had sent, all the emails James had sent. She’d gotten them. And never responded. 

Ten... Nine... Eight...

That hurt a little. It made sense, but it still hurt a little. 

Seven... Six... Five...

Filippa deleted what she had written, which was mostly just Wren’s name, a greeting, and a random collection of letters she had not intended to write in the first place. Not a big loss. Filippa had always been better at reciting others’ words than she had been at composing her own. 

Four... Three... Two...

The same had been true for all of them, to some extent, but Filippa had always felt that way the most about herself. Talking was paralyzing. Sharing was paralyzing. It was pathetic, but she just couldn’t do it. Jesus Christ, she had found out that one of her best friends had murdered another one of her best friends and she had just accepted it and moved on. She’d helped him cover it up for fucks sake. Richard may have been to angry, James may have felt too much, but at least they got something. Filippa was mostly just empty.

Ten... Nine... Eight...

Sinking into that hole was helping nothing, she rationalised, removing her hands from where they had slowly become tangled into her hair and placing them back where they belonged on the keyboard. 

‘Wren,’ Filippa typed, ignoring that she was starting off with exactly what she had deleted previously. ‘You’re right, it has been awhile.’ She frowned. Did that sound too bitchy? Maybe. She deleted it anyway just to be safe. ‘Wren, it’s good to hear from you again.” She kind of wanted to slam her head into the desk.

Seven... Six... Five...

This was way too hard, so Filippa decided to not delete it. ‘I would be happy to see you to talk when you’re in DC. Would it be possible to get a definite date on that? Thank you so much. -Filippa’

She frowned, copied and pasted it, and sent it to Alexander, with a caption asking if it seemed okay, or too blunt, or too formal. And she waited.

Four... Three... Two…

Alexander was fast and replied within ten minutes. 

•

Hey Pip. It’s a good email. Sounds like you. Wren will be fine with it.  
Colin says hi.  
-Alexander

•

It sounded like her. Okay. Getting upset was silly. Filippa sent the email. The horribly formal, horribly emotionless email. 

Ten… Nine… Eight…

She should probably delete that one part.

•

Wren,  
I would be happy to see you to talk when you are in DC. Would it be possible to get a definite date on that?  
Thank you so much.  
-Filippa

•

Filippa,  
I will be over from April 12th-17th. I know this is a bit in advanced, but could we meet in Pentagon City on the 13th around noon? My hotel is near there, and we can take the metro from there further into the city. I’ve always kind of wanted to see the Capitol Building.  
It will be nice to finally get to see you again. I know I’ve missed a lot.  
Yours, Wren

•

It was something interesting, wanting so desperately to feel something while simultaneously feeling as if you were overflowing with emotions. 

It was the same thing with the telling-people-things problem. Filipaa really wanted to be able to express emotions, but she just...could not force herself to do it. Maybe it was because she had hardly been able to force words out for half the time she was in high school and thus never developed the proper social skills to know when to share things. Maybe it was because she spent so much time pretending to be other people that she lost sight of her own voice somewhere along the way. Maybe it was because her family treated emotions like something to be disgusted by and discouraged her from having them, let alone expressing them. 

It was something odd, understanding where somebody fucked you up but still letting yourself be ruined by it and just blaming yourself. Because maybe she was making it up. Maybe there was something wrong with her, totally separate from anything else. Maybe everyone was like this, and she had just missed a memo somewhere that it was normal. Because it seemed totally probable that everyone else had learned how to function and she just had not.

Of course, what did that mean for Wren? Wren felt things, real things, not just the emotions they stole from someone else’s writing. They all did, James and Oliver and Richard and Alexander and Meredith, but Wren was the only one who ever confronted Filippa about why on Earth she couldn’t. 

(“I’ve known you for years -years!- and I still feel like we’re, I don’t know, lab partners. We hardly know each other. You tell me nothing; you show me nothing. Our relationship is basically nothing”)

Wren was upset. She was angry. About a lot of things. That didn’t make it hurt less. If anything, it hurt worse, because that was everything Filippa wanted. She wanted to be angry, she wanted to punch something, she wanted to cry, she wanted to tell somebody (Wren, definitely Wren) what they meant to her. It was all...vaguely overwhelming and she just ended up nowhere.

Or on a bus, riding to Washington DC. 

Alexander had called one last time before she left, asking for only about the hundredth time if she wanted him to go along with her. At that point, Filippa had run over every method of calming down she could think of and almost would have said yes. Thank God she couldn’t buy another ticket. There were not enough presidents of countries in the world to run through. 

The bus ride was long and boring. She’d brought an audio book (The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell) but she’d fallen asleep and by the time she woke up, it was almost her stop and she had missed so much of the book that there was no point in continuing.

Pentagon City was loud and chaotic, and she kind of liked it. There was something about walking up the ramp from the parking garage (because she could not figure out on the map if there was supposed to be a real entrance somewhere) that built a degree of suspense. Or maybe that was just her trying to come up with anything to distract her from the fact that she was supposed to be finding Wren. That was certainly why she took ten minutes to look at a tiny store filled with tinier flags. 

Wren had texted her, because apparently that was a thing they did now, that they could meet at 12:00 exactly next to the bathrooms next to the plants across the food court and next to the fancy dress store. So at exactly 12:00, Filippa walked across the food court, past the plants, and found the bathrooms next to the fancy dress store. She kind of wanted to drop dead on the spot, or at least find an excuse to go home. 

And Wren. She was there, because of course she was. They had scheduled this meeting. Filippa’s entire mind was malfunctioning, but that was fine. 

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

Wren looked nice, which was unsurprising. She had always been very pretty, in a small, pixie-ish sort of way. And she also always dressed like she was at a job interview. She fit in with the environment they were meeting in, to say the least. She did not look like her entire mind was manufacturing.

Was it weird to shake her hand? They had lived together for four years at school and then for another two in an apartment. Did the three years they had been apart outweigh that? Maybe it was just the business thing. Filippa had never been a part of a business, but this was her idea of it. People not being personal and the like.

She shook Wren’s hand. 

“There’s a restaurant near here called Champps. It’s a sports bar.” Wren did not seem to find the handshaking weird. “Do you want to go?”

Filippa couldn’t help it. She raised an eyebrow. “A sports bar?”

Wren shrugged, and it was their second year again. “I heard it has good raspberry lemonade and bad music.”

“I suppose if the raspberry lemonade is worth it then.”

Wren pulled a map out of her pocket. “It’s just a five minute walk away, if you are okay with going.”

The five minute walk was more like a ten minute walk, but regardless, it was awkward. It was also hot and humid, because it was Washington DC in the middle of July and that was just kind of how things were. Filippa was a highschool sophmore again and couldn’t force words out of her mouth around a pretty girl.

“I don’t remember, had you ever been to DC before?” Wren eventually asked. “I know Alex had, and of course...well, my family had.”

They still jumped around the topic of Richard. 

“I’ve never been.” Filippa eventually answered, still for some absurd reason feeling the panicked need to lie. Wren could not possibly find something out just from the fact that she had never been to some city. “But you have, and you’ve never seen the Capitol building?”

Wren sort of shrugged. “Our parents were busy, and we were hardly more than children. We weren’t allowed to wander ourselves.”

“So you’ve never been on one of the double decker buses?”

She shook her head. “I am actually quite happy not to have been. They seem...unsafe. I know I’m a short person but I wouldn’t want to go with a tall friend and have them hit a tree branch or something.”

“Reasonable concern.”

•

The restaurant, true to what Wren had said, had great raspberry lemonade and bad music. It also had very small tables and Filippa was all to aware of how close she was to Wren. She counted backwards from ten in her head. Not the time.

Wren had asked about everyone, sidestepping the topic of James just like she had with Richard. Filippa wanted to tell her. She wanted to tell her so bad. But the three of them had agreed, the less people who knew the truth, the better off they were, at least for the time being. 

“I’m actually very glad Alexander told Colin about...what happened that year,” Wren eventually said, sipping her lemonade. “It’s terribly lonely to be the sole person living that.” She stared at the table for a second, seemingly totally absorbed by her thoughts. She blinked. “Um, anyway, how have you been?”

Filippa wished a sink hole would open up underneath them. Pity it wasn’t Florida. DC ones, from what she understood, tended to be smaller. 

“I’ve been okay.” Filippa said uncomfortably. “What about you?”

Wren’s eyes narrowed slightly. Filippa knew she was thinking about their last conversation, and how absolutely nothing had changed. 

(“I just wish you would trust me, or at least tell me why you can’t. I can’t keep being the only putting any emotion into this relationship. You don’t need to pretend that everything is completely neutral the whole time.”)

But Wren’s face softened, and she kind of smiled. “I’ve been doing better. I’m trying to write more. I don’t think I’m ready to, you know, act again, but it’s nice to still be involved with Shakespeare in someway. I didn’t think I could feel safe there again, but weirdly, I do.”

Filippa hated it. She hated that Wren could so easily disclose her feelings like that. 

“That’s nice.” She knew she sounded incredibly fake, so she tried to follow that up with something else. “I’m glad, really.”

Wren, wisely, moved on. “Have you heard from Meredith lately? I tried calling her a while ago but she never answered. Or called me back, for that matter.”

“I don’t think she wants much to do with us anymore,” Filippa said, matter of factly. “She won’t even visit Oliver.”

A waiter arrived to distribute their food, cutting off the conversation. Even afterwards, Wren was quiet for a few seconds, picking at her salad. The salad, Filippa noticed, had bleu cheese on it, and absurdly, that made her crack a smile. Wren had always been ridiculously obsessed with it, something that nearly caused her and Alexander to have a full blown debate over a table at some weird dinner theatre event they had tried to go to once. (It was worth mentioning that there was nothing weird about dinner theatre as a concept, for that was actually something they had all found to be quite fun. What was weird was that the group putting it together had attempted to somehow replicate Romeo and Juliet, but with the title characters replaced by Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The whole thing had ended with Henry dramatically dying for seemingly no other reason than just to fit with the narrative of the inspiration, and Filippa having a lot of questions about, well, everything.) That being said, it had been quite remarkable to see Wren, the least argumentative out of the lot of them, and Alexander, who had once famously claimed to have out-argued Richard, fighting that furiously over something that ultimately, did not matter in the slightest.

Filippa had been about to comment on exactly that, but Wren started first.

“Can you really blame her?” Wren said, setting her fork down with a small clang. “I know..what he said happened was not the whole story, but he’s in jail for mur-” She closed her eyes for the briefest second. “He’s in jail for murdering her boyfriend. I never want to see him again and frankly, I wouldn’t blame her if she never wanted to again either. I don’t know how you and Alexander can do it.”

Filippa bit the inside of her mouth. Don’t fucking tell her. “You’re right.”

Wren’s face dropped again, and Filippa’s heart sank. There was something so horribly unfair in this. Alexander knew the truth, Colin knew the truth, Oliver knew the truth, James knew the truth, and Filippa knew the truth. But did Wren not deserve it more than all of them? Filippa knew she deserved to feel guilty; she had kept the secret from everyone for month, because James told her to. She had treated it just like every other secret she had been keeping for any of them for years. Somebody had literally died, and she had treated it the same way she treated it when Alexander told her during their first year that he low-key thought James was hot, or when Wren told her she was the one who had spilt the orange juice on the carpet in their third year. She had been cast as their secret keeper the day she stepped into that school and she played it dutifully still. 

Filippa Kosta was a liar, and she hardly deserved to feel sorry for herself because of it.

“Hey,” Wren said softly, and suddenly Filippa’s hand was in hers. “Are you okay? You seem...out of it, I suppose.”

Her voice was not going to crack. “I’m fine.”

Wren just looked at her, eyes filled with emotions Filippa didn’t even want to try to decipher. “Pip, I know we ended a mess and you probably never want to hear this from me again, but please, don’t lie to me anymore.”

(“I can’t deal with loving someone who I feel like might be lying to me every time she opens her mouth.”)

That was a lot. Filippa wanted to explode. Rich person’s garden party. Her voice was calm. “Wren, I don’t want to lie to you-”

“Then don’t,” Wren cut her off, so different from her however-many-years-old self. Wren had only gotten mad at Filippa once. “Don’t lie then.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Is it?” Wren’s voice was the one to crack instead. “Because I don’t think it’s very complicated. I just want everything to be normal again. I want my friends and I want to know what happened to my cousin. And I want to feel like you feel anything for me. Is that too much?”

“Wren, I can’t- I- I don’t…” And suddenly Filippa was falling apart, just not quite on the outside. How could she communicate this? How could she tell somebody who felt so deeply and beautifully that she couldn’t? She couldn’t just say she felt something and she couldn’t say that she couldn’t say that she felt things. And then it built up so much inside of her that she could hardly get anything out and Wren was left looking at her like she was vaguely disappointed. “I’m so sorry.”

At some point the check had come -unsplit, because neither of them had thought to ask- and Wren was flipping the pen between her fingers. “Me too. I should have realised that this was a bad idea. Neither of us are ready to talk. I shouldn’t have asked you to.” She uncapped the pen. “I’ll take the bill, okay? I know it’s been awhile, but I think we stopped on my turn.” 

With that, she had defused the situation, but Filippa was too stuck to do anything other than nod. 

Wren paid, got her card back, and stood up, almost smiling at Filippa. “If you want, I can walk you back to your bus? I don’t know what time it leaves…”

“No, it’s fine.” Filippa said softly. “I can make it back. Go see the Capitol building.”

Wren took her hand, bringing it to her lips. “Maybe one day we can try this again. Go together. Tell Alexander I say hi, okay?”

“I will. Goodbye, Wren. I’ll miss you.” And suddenly it was like the emails all over again. Too emotional, or not emotional enough?

Wren gave her one last smile, before turning back, the bell on the door ringing behind her as she left the restaurant. 

(“Filippa, you may be my best friend, but I can’t do this anymore.” And she slammed the door behind her.)

Filippa wanted to burst into tears on the spot, and now that Wren was gone she felt them actually begin to prick at the corner of her eyes. She, acting mostly on autopilot, pulled her phone from her pocket and clicked on her most recent number. It rang and quickly picked up.

“Pip? You okay?”

“Alexander?” Her voice almost cracked. “Hey, I’m going to take the next bus. Can you pick me up when I get back? I don’t want to go home.”

There was no silence, no delay. “Of course. What time?” And the tears almost fell.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was a lot. I'm stressed out now. Is anyone else stressed out now?  
> Some notes:  
> 1\. oKAY SO I MADE THE DIRK GENTLY REFERENCE HERE BEFORE THE INCORRECT QUOTES POST HAPPENED I JUST NEED EVERYONE TO KNOW THAT.  
> 2\. Anyway. So no Shakespeare quotes or fun formating stuff. I'm tired and don't know shit and I have callback auditions in two days. Leave me alone.  
> 3\. So this was supposed to be set in NYC but I (as mentioned) don't know shit but I do know shit about DC so here we are.  
> 4\. The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell is a good ass book. So if anyone needs recomendations, you're welcome.  
> 5\. Champps really does have excellent raspberry lemonade.  
> 6\. It says in my notes on my document for this that the Office would have been a better show if Karen and Pam ditched Jim and dated each other so... we'll just include that here.  
> 7\. Not to get into the controversy but... James isn't dead.  
> 8\. The Romero and Juliet thing with Henry VIII, suddenly I want it? It sounds like a nightmare but I want it.  
> 9\. So. Thanks for reading, etc. This was a mess. I'm sure I stepped on so much cannon. As always, tumblr is penguinsarebetterthanpeople if anyone wants to see me be annoying even more than we already have here.  
> edit like five minutes later: forgot to mention, i stole the title from a pink song because i've been having fun obsessing over that line lately and why not use it for a story where i just force my own personal issues on a fictional character. okay done for real now.


End file.
